Film Freak Centraltag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-999282957331064452018-02-08T13:15:16-05:00TypePadThe Final Cut (2004)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d2d87d53970c2018-02-08T13:15:16-05:002018-02-08T13:15:28-05:00*/**** starring Robin Williams, Mira Sorvino, James Caviezel, Mimi Kuzyk written and directed by Omar Naim by Walter Chaw It's interesting to me in an esoteric way that Robin Williams consistently seeks out projects that position him as some sort of levitating guru detached from the travails of the common man, floating above the madding crowd with a beatific smile on his god's-eye mug. Think of, among the many shrinks, ex-shrinks, serial killers, and genies Williams has played, his "Wizard of Oz"-ian Dr. Know from A.I., his demented developer Sy from One Hour Photo, or his sainted Dr. Chris from What Dreams May Come. By all accounts, Williams is a nice fellow--a little manic and arrested, perhaps, but pleasant and even philanthropic. So what is it about the camera that turns him into an auto-consumptive egoist with a bizarre saviour complex, into this sad clown, velvet or otherwise, who finds humour in tragedy (so the theory goes) but lately has worked pretty hard at just being gloweringly melancholic in "psychological thrillers" long on sterile atmosphere and short on any sort of resonance? Williams has this air of feeling sorry for humanity that doesn't seem pious as much as it seems...Walter ChawEastern Promises (2007)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d2d61768970c2018-01-31T20:35:24-05:002018-01-31T20:35:24-05:00****/**** starring Viggo Moretensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl screenplay by Steve Knight directed by David Cronenberg by Walter Chaw As executed by our pre-eminent insect anthropologist, David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises is more fairytale than thriller, one that finds new muse Viggo Mortensen as Nikolai, the rising star of an émigré Russian mob family taken root in the heart of London within the red velvet-lined walls of a restaurant innocuously-/romantically-named "Trans-Siberian." Self-described as "wolfish," this pack is led by grandfatherly Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), who's disappointed with his ineffectual son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) and looking to replace him with a surrogate heir. The rot of that familial discord throws its roots back to ferocious opening minutes that see first a vicious throat-slashing, then a fourteen-year-old, pregnant prostitute haemorrhaging on the floor of a drugstore after she's told that, for Methadone, the pharmacist will need a prescription. Cronenberg's London is a cess seething beneath a veneer of "normalcy"; regarded as a toxic tabernacle in Spider, the city is transformed here into a garish, meticulously theatrical wonderland. The central problem of the picture has a lot to do with the idea that Cronenberg has again taken a pre-existing script and reordered it...Walter ChawBlade Runner 2049 (2017) - 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digitaltag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d2cf7cfd970c2018-01-14T21:18:57-05:002018-01-14T21:34:07-05:00Please note that all framegrabs are from the 1080p version ***½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B+ starring Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana De Armas, Jared Leto screenplay by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green directed by Denis Villeneuve by Walter Chaw Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 is oblique without inspiring contemplation, less a blank slate or a Rorschach than an expository nullity. It's opaque. There are ideas here that are interesting and inspired by the original film and Philip K. Dick source material, but they've all been worked through in better and countless iterations also inspired by the original film and Philip K. Dick. The best sequel to Blade Runner is Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, with a long sidelong glance at Under the Skin, perhaps--and Her, too. All three films are referenced in Blade Runner 2049 without their relative freshness or, what is it, yearning? There aren't any questions left for Villeneuve's picture, really, just cosmological, existential kōans of the kind thrown around 101 courses taught by favourite professors and at late-night coffee shops and whiskey bars. Yet as that, and only that, Blade Runner 2049 is effective, even brilliant. It's a tremendous adaptation of a...Walter ChawDistrict 9 (2009)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c94216c6970b2018-01-03T14:53:08-05:002018-01-03T14:54:05-05:00****/**** starring Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Nathalie Boltt, Sylvaine Strike screenplay by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell directed by Neill Blomkamp by Walter Chaw An unlikely marriage of Alien Nation and David Cronenberg's The Fly, Neill Blomkamp's remarkable District 9 is that occasional genre picture that's both topical and so good it made my stomach knot. Set in South Africa, it opens by rejecting the Eurocentrism of most science-fiction pictures. Here, the little green men don't hover over the Lincoln Memorial or the Eiffel Tower, but rather Johannesburg, where the malnourished, crustacean-like denizens (they're called, derogatorily, "prawns") of a giant mothership are quickly relegated to a barbed-wire enclosed slum, the titular "District 9." Its parallel to Alien Nation is obvious, down to that film's equation of aliens with Chinese immigrants in San Francisco; these are the "bestial" blacks of Afrikaner nightmares: physically powerful, engaged in illicit activities, and blamed for every casualty outside their heavily-segregated "district." But where Alien Nation identified the threat to that immigrant community as an insidious ghost of its traditional past (an opium allegory? How 18th-century), District 9 satirizes the numbing effect of cable news networks, as well as the dangers faced by any outcast culture...Walter ChawBlade Runner 2049 (2017)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d2b12c3b970c2017-10-04T14:53:14-05:002017-10-04T15:17:00-05:00***½/**** starring Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Jared Leto screenplay by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green directed by Denis Villeneuve by Walter Chaw Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 is oblique without inspiring contemplation, less a blank slate or a Rorschach than an expository nullity. It's opaque. There are ideas here that are interesting and inspired by the original film and Philip K. Dick source material, but they've all been worked through in better and countless iterations also inspired by the original film and Philip K. Dick. The best sequel to Blade Runner is Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, with a long sidelong glance at Under the Skin, perhaps--and Her, too. All three films are referenced in Blade Runner 2049 without their relative freshness or, what is it, yearning? There aren't any questions left for Villeneuve's picture, really, just cosmological, existential kōans of the kind thrown around 101 courses taught by favourite professors and at late-night coffee shops and whiskey bars. Yet as that, and only that, Blade Runner 2049 is effective, even brilliant. It's a tremendous adaptation of a Kafka novel (a couple of them), about individuals without an identity in tension against a faceless...Walter ChawCapote (2005)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c9186a76970b2017-08-22T19:41:21-05:002017-08-22T19:41:21-05:00**/**** starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr., Chris Cooper screenplay by Dan Futterman, based on the novel by Gerald Clarke directed by Bennett Miller by Walter Chaw You hear him before you see him: Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman), raconteur, socialite, showman, standing at the centre of the kind of swinging party immortalized in the glossy, offensive film version of his Breakfast at Tiffany's. He's telling a story in a claustrophobic storm of admirers, his reedy, almost-falsetto voice broken now and again by his wheezing, self-conscious laugh. He's flirting with his own persona, I think (Hoffman, not Capote), and the tiny moments I'm able to see through the barrage of misdirection thrown up by screenwriter Dan Futterman and director Bennett Miller (all three old friends--the film plays smug like an exclusive reunion) to strike at the heart of Hoffman's own situation as a sensitive soul trapped in the body of a second fiddle (Kevin Smith syndrome--or, more flatteringly, Charles Laughton), are the moments Capote means something to me beyond another exhumation of the Clutter Family murders already chronicled (and exploited twice already by Capote's In Cold Blood and Richard Brooks's magnificent film treatment of the same) and...Walter ChawGhost in the Shell (2017) - Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c90ecdbf970b2017-07-24T14:57:06-05:002017-08-11T10:32:40-05:00**½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras C+ starring Scarlett Johansson, 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano, Michael Carmen Pitt, Juliette Binoche screenplay by Jamie Moss and William Wheeler and Ehren Kruger, based on the comic "The Ghost in the Shell" by Shirow Masamune directed by Rupert Sanders by Walter Chaw Emily Yoshida, in an article for THE VERGE addressing the outcry over the casting of Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell, has the last word on the topic as it pertains to anime in general and Mamoru Oshii's seminal original in particular (an adaptation of a popular manga to which most casual fans in the West won't have been exposed). She provides a stunning, succinct historical context for Japanese self-denial and the country's post-bellum relationship with technology, then writes a review of this film in which she systematically destroys it for its essential misunderstanding of the source material. I agree with every word. I learned a lot. And I still like the new film, anyway. I think Ghost in the Shell is probably fascinating in spite of itself and because the environment has made it dangerous for pretty much anyone to discuss what its critics (not Yoshida, per se) wish it did....Walter ChawBlack Swan (2002) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb09aa0dda970d2017-06-28T20:38:37-05:002017-06-28T20:38:37-05:00½*/**** Image D Sound C Extras B starring Melanie Doane, Janet Monid, Michael Riley, Ted Dykstra screenplay by Wendy Ord and Matt John Evans directed by Wendy Ord by Walter Chaw Wendy Ord's Black Swan had me at "I'm tellin' you, there were traces of blood on that feather." The film is a dedicatedly stupid murder-mystery/small town hick opera featuring your standard collection of comely waitresses bound for better things, saucy diner matrons, scumbags with sidekicks, stolid policemen, preternaturally bright children, and literal idiot savants. Set in a tiny hamlet in the Great White North ("Hopeville," natch), the picture opens with an indecipherable prologue that cuts between three separate storylines: a bunch of teens in a car; the titular black swan doing whatever it is that large water fowl do at night; and a pair of scumbags going through their nocturnal rituals. The rest of the film follows suit by stuttering between two children playing hooky, a cute waitress (Melanie Doane) flirting with a drifter while dreaming, Steve Earle-like, of getting out of Dodge, and of an investigation of a possible serial killer who leaves black swan feathers at the scenes of his crimes. RUNNING TIME 91 minutes MPAA Not...Walter ChawBowling for Columbine (2002)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d28b2517970c2017-06-09T19:03:57-05:002017-06-09T19:04:52-05:00***/**** directed by Michael Moore by Walter Chaw The most successfully provocative film of the year, Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine nonetheless hurts itself with its questionable tactics and Moore's inability to leave certain pulpits alone, but the documentarian succeeds in providing a canny, often brilliant, examination of the root causes of America's amazing propensity for gun violence. The picture goes beyond a condemnation of "gun nuts"--and beginning as it does with an extended interview with James Nichols (the nutball brother of nutball Terry Nichols, who, along with Timothy McVeigh, was convicted of the Oklahoma City Murrah Building bombing), it's not always certain that it will. Moore steers conversation away from easy targets like backwoods militias and the tragedy of hick-ism into thornier areas like the marketing of fear and, if only incidentally, the dangers of too much self-esteem. The ultimate value of the piece lies in its ability to veer the dialogue regarding firearms off course from the standard right-wing/left-wing platitudes; in its taking a new tactic in addressing the issues of racism and the media; and in how it provides an example of a film that is at once an intellectual exercise and a personal showcase. Marked by...Walter ChawBlindness (2008) + Eagle Eye (2008)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d28b10de970c2017-06-09T13:02:14-05:002017-06-09T13:03:03-05:00BLINDNESS */**** starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Alice Braga, Gael García Bernal screenplay by Don McKellar, based on the novel by José Saramago directed by Fernando Meirelles EAGLE EYE ½*/**** starring Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Billy Bob Thornton screenplay by John Glenn & Travis Adam Wright and Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott directed by D.J. Caruso by Walter Chaw Brazilian wunderkind Fernando Meirelles has the one-trick pony and he's beaten its corpse for all the slickefied, electrified, vaguely exploitive prestige pieces he's made his calling card since City of God exploded into the loving arms of the arthouse. His latest, Blindness, feels like just another stroll down the same moralizing path as the residents of some generic city go blind, with only the bleary, red-rimmed eyes of Julianne Moore left as the moral barometer and literal/spiritual guide. And like his stable of reliable steeds, Blindness reveals itself at the end as having nothing much to say beyond the Lord of the Flies truism that men left to their own devices are no better than animals. Moore's an unnamed dingbat housewife fond of drinking a little too much wine and tittering around the limited orbit of her optometrist husband...Walter ChawAlien Nation: The Complete Series (1989-1990) + Doctor Who: The Complete First Series (2005) - DVDstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c8fb5343970b2017-05-23T16:26:47-05:002017-05-23T16:26:47-05:00ALIEN NATION: THE COMPLETE SERIES Image C Sound C Extras C "Alien Nation: The TV Movie (Pilot)," "Fountain of Youth," "Little Lost Lamb," "Fifteen with Wanda," "The Takeover," "The First Cigar," "Night of the Screams," "Contact," "Three to Tango," "The Game," "Chains of Love," "The Red Room," "The Spirit of '95," "Generation to Generation," "Eyewitness News," "Partners," "Real Men," "Crossing the Line," "Rebirth," "Gimme, Gimme," "The Touch," "Green Eyes" DOCTOR WHO: THE COMPLETE FIRST SERIES Image A Sound B Extras B "Rose," "The End of the World," "The Unquiet Dead," "Aliens of London," "World War Three," "Dalek," "The Long Game," "Father's Day," "The Empty Child," "The Doctor Dances," "Boom Town," "Bad Wolf," "The Parting of the Ways" by Walter Chaw I'm a fan of Graham Baker's dreadful Alien Nation from 1988. Run the words of the title together and you get a not-terribly-clever yet not-entirely-awful summary of what the film is getting at when it's not busy being a retarded high-concept buddy cop flick pairing your typical crusty old vet with an earnest rookie who happens to be an alien with a spotted pate instead of a hilarious racial minority. (Shades of Dead Heat, where Joe Piscopo played a bug-eyed...Walter ChawAtanarjuat (2002)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c8fa930c970b2017-05-21T13:49:31-05:002017-05-21T13:53:13-05:00Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner The Fast Runner ****/**** starring Natar Ungalaaq, Sylvia Ivalu, Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq, Lucy Tulugarjuk screenplay by Paul Apak Angilirq directed by Zacharias Kunuk by Walter Chaw Zacharias Kunuk's Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), the first motion picture presented entirely in the Inuit language Inutkikuk, is what it means to be transported by the cinema: taken to another place and another time on the flickering wings of film's lunar art. It is the realization of the full possibility of the movies to present the alien as familiar while providing a vital anthropological connection through the naturalism and glorious universality of its characters and story. An Inuit legend passed through centuries of oral tradition that demonstrates a very particular peculiarity of world mythology, Atanarjuat, seen one way, is a classic banning fable--thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife and possessions, thou shalt not murder. Jung spoke of a common well of images and signifiers from which we draw our stories and Atanarjuat, unfolding on a cold-blasted primeval arctic plain, has the quality of totem. Kumaglak (Apayata Kotierk) is an unlucky hunter forced to suffer the jibes and leftovers of his clansmen in remote Igloolik. "One day my sons will take...Walter ChawHot Docs '17: Resurrecting Hassantag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b8d27fca80970c2017-05-06T15:36:12-05:002017-07-18T11:18:25-05:00****/**** directed by Carlo Guillermo Proto Hot Docs, the Canadian International Documentary Festival, runs April 27-May 7, 2016 at Toronto's Bloor Cinema. Visit the fest's official site for more details. by Bill Chambers Denis Harting, his childhood sweetheart Peggy, and their daughter Lauviah busk together as a capella singers on the Montreal metro. Peggy prefers performing outside to inside: "It's more fun and it's more money. And people are a bit goofier." She says this to her secret boyfriend, Philou, during one of their transatlantic phone calls, which she's becoming increasingly brazen about. If you're going to pity Denis, pity him for getting cuckolded, not because he's blind. After all, so are Peggy and Lauviah. Lauviah had a brother, Hassan, who died in a drowning accident at the age of six. Denis tells a radio interviewer his death made headlines, so I looked it up and discovered that Hassan was not also blind. His parents donated his corneas--not to Lauviah, alas. As I type this, I'm wondering about the ethical propriety of that, were it medically possible. Like any work of direct cinema, Resurrecting Hassan raises as many questions as it answers, though it goes the extra mile in pursuing...Bill ChambersGhost in the Shell (2017)tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01bb098b6368970d2017-04-01T16:20:01-05:002017-04-02T11:13:13-05:00**½/**** starring Scarlett Johansson, 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano, Michael Carmen Pitt, Juliette Binoche screenplay by Jamie Moss and William Wheeler and Ehren Kruger, based on the comic "The Ghost in the Shell" by Shirow Masamune directed by Rupert Sanders by Walter Chaw Emily Yoshida, in an article for THE VERGE addressing the outcry over the casting of Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell, has the last word on the topic as it pertains to anime in general and Mamoru Oshii's seminal original in particular (an adaptation of a popular manga to which most casual fans in the West won't have been exposed). She provides a stunning, succinct historical context for Japanese self-denial and the country's post-bellum relationship with technology, then writes a review of this film in which she systematically destroys it for its essential misunderstanding of the source material. I agree with every word. I learned a lot. And I still like the new film, anyway. I think Ghost in the Shell is probably fascinating in spite of itself and because the environment has made it dangerous for pretty much anyone to discuss what its critics (not Yoshida, per se) wish it did. I like it because its production...Walter ChawA Glimpse of Hell (2001) - DVDtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a0168ea36d6b2970c01b7c8d5bdea970b2017-03-03T00:01:00-05:002017-02-14T01:00:18-05:00**/**** Image A Sound A- starring James Caan, Robert Sean Leonard, Daniel Roebuck, Jamie Harrold screenplay by David Freed directed by Mikael Salomon by Walter Chaw Apart from the satirical possibilities, it appears that the rationale behind the title A Glimpse of Hell is the graphic aftermath of an explosion in the gunnery chamber of the U.S.S. Iowa. A made-for-TV docudrama that breeds Edward Dmytryk's The Caine Mutiny with Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men, A Glimpse of Hell impresses only with its dedication to mediocrity. While the subject is topical, recounting the possible malfeasance aboard an aging battleship that resulted in a magazine explosion, the execution is theatrical and cardboard from direction (by Mikael Salomon, cinematographer of The Abyss) to performance. RUNNING TIME 85 minutes MPAA R ASPECT RATIO(S) 1.78:1 (16x9-enhanced) LANGUAGES English DD 5.1 English Dolby Surround CC Yes SUBTITLES English Spanish REGION 1 DISC TYPE DVD-9 STUDIO Fox Lieutenant (j.g.) Dan Meyer (Robert Sean Leonard) is eager to serve aboard the "sword's point"--a battleship, the legendary Iowa, that is run with a kind of imperious Queeg-ness by Capt. Fred Moosally (James Caan). Shocked at the apparent decrepitude of the ship's armaments (a soda can is used as...Walter Chaw